Literatura científica selecionada sobre o tema "Potatoes – Fiction"

A Swede making a sandwich will use the word pålägg in reference to what s/he puts on a slice of bread – cheese, ham, sausage etc. In cafeterias in Sweden one can often come across a notice - påtår ingår ‘refill included’. How should the Swedish pålägg and påtår be rendered in Lithuanian?The paper deals with some issues of lexicographic practice arising in the process of compiling a forthcoming Swedish-Lithuanian dictionary. It will include about 30 000 word entries and a large number of expressions. Swedish-Lithuanian lexicography is a rather new field in Lithuania, which has determined the pioneering character of the present investigation.The paper aims at identifying certain tendencies in the search of equivalents to names for food. The words discussed include Swedish examples like knäckebröd, palt, pepparkaka, pyttipanna, pålägg, påtår, pölsa, wienerbröd and some others. The paper also discusses some more general issues pertaining to the field of language and food and some strategies adopted by a fiction translator and lexicographer.The examples demonstrate the complexity of the lexicographer’s task when searching for equivalents to both rather exotic and very simple Swedish dishes, which is be due to the absence of tradition of consuming the dishes by Lithuanians. Despite identical raw food products (potatoes, meat, bread), in the course of history the Swedish and the Lithuanian cuisine have taken differing paths of development and experienced different influences. In some specific cases one can find a rather precise equivalent to an ‘exotic’ dish (cf. SE pölsa, similar to EN haggis, LT košeliena). Meanwhile, a search of an equivalent to some ordinary, casual dish or food product can become a real challenge to a lexicographer resulting in a ‘near’ equivalent with a descriptive or an expository comment, cf. SE knäckebröd, EN crisp bread, LT ‘traški (švediška) duona’; SE wienerbröd, EN Danish pastry, LT ‘sluoksniuotos tešlos bandelė su įdaru’; also cf. SE pyttipanna, similar to EN hash or bubble and squeak, LT ‘patiekalas iš mėsos gabalėlių, bulvių ir daržovių (ypač apie keptus (pietų) likučius)’. The lexicographer’s demanding task requires an interdisciplinary approach, an in-depth knowledge in different fields of research, familiarity with changing culture-specific realia and attention to detail.The field of language and food is rather new in Lithuania. It opens up new interesting research perspectives to lexicography, discourse analysis, culture studies, etc.

This essay argues for the necessity of a critical reconsideration of Brian Friel's short fiction both because of its own merits and since its depiction of emplaced communities struggling with aspects of modernity anticipates such conflicts in the major plays. Although Friel does not believe that rural culture was ever pristine and unadulterated, he nonetheless hints how modernity's advent into his chosen milieu of northwestern Ireland/Northern Ireland can create problems among its inhabitants such as destruction of community. ‘The Diviner’ and ‘The Saucer of Larks’ valorize the organic epistemology practiced by inhabitants who are outsiders to a local culture but become more in tune with local rhythms and landscape — the flux of place identified by phenomenologist Edward Casey — than many of the original inhabitants. In some situations, such as those he explores in short stories such as ‘Kelly's Hall’ and ‘Among the Ruins’, he offers positive portrayals of mechanized culture's ability to unify communities when that new technology is properly controlled, while in others, such as ‘Foundry House’, ‘The Potato Gatherers’, and ‘Everything Neat and Tidy’, he shows the debilitating effects of technology.

A Narrative of the Sufferings of Maria Bennett, a crudely printed, eight-page pamphlet, was published in Dublin in spring 1846. It has been interpreted as an early fiction concerning New Zealand, or alternatively as a New Zealand ‘captivity narrative’, possibly based on the author’s own experiences. Against these readings, it is argued here that Maria Bennett, more concerned with Ireland than New Zealand, is a piece of pro-British propaganda hurried out in connection with the British Government’s ‘Protection of Life (Ireland) Bill’ ‐ generally referred to simply as the ‘Coercion Bill’ ‐ first debated on 23 February 1846. The Great Famine had begun with the substantial failure of Ireland’s staple potato crop in autumn 1845. This led to an increase in lawlessness, and the Government planned to combine its relief measures with draconian new security regulations. The story of Maria Bennett, a fictional young Irishwoman transported to Australia but shipwrecked in New Zealand, was designed to advertise the humanity of British law. Having escaped from the Māori, she manages to get to London, where she is pardoned by Sir James Graham, the Home Secretary, the man responsible for the Coercion Bill. New Zealand, imagined at the very beginning of the British colonial era, functions in the text as a dark analogy to Ireland, a sort of pristine example of the ‘savage’ conditions making British rule necessary and desirable in the first place. A hungry, lawless Ireland could descend to that level of uncivilization, unless, the propagandist urges, it accepts more British law.

Prompted by the attention received in recent years by the collateral benefits of reading and the growing prominence of bibliotherapy in the literary marketplace, this paper aims to investigate the therapeutic effects of books as they emerge from the experience of fictional characters, a perhaps less scientifically sound endeavour than empirical studies and clinical trials targeting real-life readers but one likely to occasion interesting perspectives on reading as a coping mechanism in the face of trauma. By focusing on a variety of reading experiences gleaned from a selection of novels ranging from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice, Graham Swift’s Waterland, Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, Lloyd Jones’ Mister Pip and Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows’ The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and targeting acts of solitary communion with narrative as well as illicit seminars, informal book clubs and impromptu public readings, the analysis intends to highlight the extent to which literature can provide more than a mere pastime or intellectual challenge to its most vulnerable readers. Whether such benefits entail a sense of community, a temporary shelter from the hardships of war, a reprieve from the abuses of a totalitarian government or sanctuary from the less brutal but nevertheless haunting scars of broken relationships, parental disapproval or social rejection, the ultimate goal is to identify and assess the various survival strategies employed within these fictional universes. The

Purpose. The study is aimed to ascertain the possible ways of translation of female identity in written form through gender mask. Materials and methods. The survey is based on: the definitional analysis of gender tendencies, contextual observation of speech material of the fictional work, as well as linguistic facts interpretation and collation, statistical data manipulation. Results. The hypothesis of potential epitome of the author’s identity via gender mask in the literary text through the verbal semantic space’s analysis of the novel The Guernsey literary and potato peel pie society by M.A. Shaffer and A. Barrows (2700 manifestations) is justified. Practical implications. The research outcome can find the application in systematic scrutiny of the verb/ verbals usage in the textual space as a means of gender aspect implementation.

Marita Conlan-McKenna's Under the Hawthorne Tree (1990) and James Berry's Ajeemah and His Son (1991) are children's novels that address foundational national or regional trauma (dealing with transatlantic slavery and the Irish potato famine respectively). Both employ historical fictive modes to bring the nineteenth century to life, in the process illustrating the extractive capitalism at the heart of the colonial endeavour. Links between Ireland and the Caribbean have long existed, Hilary Beckles observing the persistent characterization of the Irish as ‘one-dimensional colonial characters […] battered and bruised by a triumphant imperial Englishness that viewed them as “baggage” along the route from Cork and Limerick through Bristol to Boston and Barbados’ (Beckles ix). Expanding on this sense of Ireland and the Caribbean as jointly tethered to global imperial trends, this article focuses on the role of food and consumption, arguing that these novels make clear the ongoing role of food scarcity and land control within the cyclical crises of capitalist expansion. Ajeemah and His Son reinforces the importance of land ownership in Jamaica as its protagonist falls in line with the values of the society he has been thrust into, while Under the Hawthorne Tree frames famine as a representative crisis of the world-system.

Introduction Food has always been an essential component of daily life. Today, thinking about food is a much more complicated pursuit than planning the next meal, with food studies scholars devoting their efforts to researching “anything pertaining to food and eating, from how food is grown to when and how it is eaten, to who eats it and with whom, and the nutritional quality” (Duran and MacDonald 234). This is in addition to the work undertaken by an increasingly wide variety of popular culture researchers who explore all aspects of food (Risson and Brien 3): including food advertising, food packaging, food on television, and food in popular fiction. In creating stories, from those works that quickly disappear from bookstore shelves to those that become entrenched in the literary canon, writers use food to communicate the everyday and to explore a vast range of ideas from cultural background to social standing, and also use food to provide perspectives “into the cultural and historical uniqueness of a given social group” (Piatti-Farnell 80). For example in Oliver Twist (1838) by Charles Dickens, the central character challenges the class system when: “Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger and reckless with misery. He rose from the table, and advancing basin and spoon in hand, to the master, said, somewhat alarmed at his own temerity–‘Please, sir, I want some more’” (11). Scarlett O’Hara in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind (1936) makes a similar point, a little more dramatically, when she declares: “As God is my witness, I’m never going to be hungry again” (419). Food can also take us into the depths of another culture: places that many of us will only ever read about. Food is also used to provide insight into a character’s state of mind. In Nora Ephron’s Heartburn (1983) an item as simple as boiled bread tells a reader so much more about Rachel Samstat than her preferred bakery items: “So we got married and I got pregnant and I gave up my New York apartment and moved to Washington. Talk about mistakes [...] there I was, trying to hold up my end in a city where you can’t even buy a decent bagel” (34). There are three ways in which writers can deal with food within their work. Firstly, food can be totally ignored. This approach is sometimes taken despite food being such a standard feature of storytelling that its absence, be it a lonely meal at home, elegant canapés at an impressively catered cocktail party, or a cheap sandwich collected from a local café, is an obvious omission. Food can also add realism to a story, with many authors putting as much effort into conjuring the smell, taste, and texture of food as they do into providing a backstory and a purpose for their characters. In recent years, a third way has emerged with some writers placing such importance upon food in fiction that the line that divides the cookbook and the novel has become distorted. This article looks at cookbooks and cookery in popular fiction with a particular focus on crime novels. Recipes: Ingredients and Preparation Food in fiction has been employed, with great success, to help characters cope with grief; giving them the reassurance that only comes through the familiarity of the kitchen and the concentration required to fulfil routine tasks: to chop and dice, to mix, to sift and roll, to bake, broil, grill, steam, and fry. Such grief can come from the breakdown of a relationship as seen in Nora Ephron’s Heartburn (1983). An autobiography under the guise of fiction, this novel is the first-person story of a cookbook author, a description that irritates the narrator as she feels her works “aren’t merely cookbooks” (95). She is, however, grateful she was not described as “a distraught, rejected, pregnant cookbook author whose husband was in love with a giantess” (95). As the collapse of the marriage is described, her favourite recipes are shared: Bacon Hash; Four Minute Eggs; Toasted Almonds; Lima Beans with Pears; Linguine Alla Cecca; Pot Roast; three types of Potatoes; Sorrel Soup; desserts including Bread Pudding, Cheesecake, Key Lime Pie and Peach Pie; and a Vinaigrette, all in an effort to reassert her personal skills and thus personal value. Grief can also result from loss of hope and the realisation that a life long dreamed of will never be realised. Like Water for Chocolate (1989), by Laura Esquivel, is the magical realist tale of Tita De La Garza who, as the youngest daughter, is forbidden to marry as she must take care of her mother, a woman who: “Unquestionably, when it came to dividing, dismantling, dismembering, desolating, detaching, dispossessing, destroying or dominating […] was a pro” (87). Tita’s life lurches from one painful, unjust episode to the next; the only emotional stability she has comes from the kitchen, and from her cooking of a series of dishes: Christmas Rolls; Chabela Wedding Cake; Quail in Rose Petal Sauce; Turkey Mole; Northern-style Chorizo; Oxtail Soup; Champandongo; Chocolate and Three Kings’s Day Bread; Cream Fritters; and Beans with Chilli Tezcucana-style. This is a series of culinary-based activities that attempts to superimpose normalcy on a life that is far from the everyday. Grief is most commonly associated with death. Undertaking the selection, preparation and presentation of meals in novels dealing with bereavement is both a functional and symbolic act: life must go on for those left behind but it must go on in a very different way. Thus, novels that use food to deal with loss are particularly important because they can “make non-cooks believe they can cook, and for frequent cooks, affirm what they already know: that cooking heals” (Baltazar online). In Angelina’s Bachelors (2011) by Brian O’Reilly, Angelina D’Angelo believes “cooking was not just about food. It was about character” (2). By the end of the first chapter the young woman’s husband is dead and she is in the kitchen looking for solace, and survival, in cookery. In The Kitchen Daughter (2011) by Jael McHenry, Ginny Selvaggio is struggling to cope with the death of her parents and the friends and relations who crowd her home after the funeral. Like Angelina, Ginny retreats to the kitchen. There are, of course, exceptions. In Ntozake Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo (1982), cooking celebrates, comforts, and seduces (Calta). This story of three sisters from South Carolina is told through diary entries, narrative, letters, poetry, songs, and spells. Recipes are also found throughout the text: Turkey; Marmalade; Rice; Spinach; Crabmeat; Fish; Sweetbread; Duck; Lamb; and, Asparagus. Anthony Capella’s The Food of Love (2004), a modern retelling of the classic tale of Cyrano de Bergerac, is about the beautiful Laura, a waiter masquerading as a top chef Tommaso, and the talented Bruno who, “thick-set, heavy, and slightly awkward” (21), covers for Tommaso’s incompetency in the kitchen as he, too, falls for Laura. The novel contains recipes and contains considerable information about food: Take fusilli […] People say this pasta was designed by Leonardo da Vinci himself. The spiral fins carry the biggest amount of sauce relative to the surface area, you see? But it only works with a thick, heavy sauce that can cling to the grooves. Conchiglie, on the other hand, is like a shell, so it holds a thin, liquid sauce inside it perfectly (17). Recipes: Dishing Up Death Crime fiction is a genre with a long history of focusing on food; from the theft of food in the novels of the nineteenth century to the utilisation of many different types of food such as chocolate, marmalade, and sweet omelettes to administer poison (Berkeley, Christie, Sayers), the latter vehicle for arsenic receiving much attention in Harriet Vane’s trial in Dorothy L. Sayers’s Strong Poison (1930). The Judge, in summing up the case, states to the members of the jury: “Four eggs were brought to the table in their shells, and Mr Urquhart broke them one by one into a bowl, adding sugar from a sifter [...he then] cooked the omelette in a chafing dish, filled it with hot jam” (14). Prior to what Timothy Taylor has described as the “pre-foodie era” the crime fiction genre was “littered with corpses whose last breaths smelled oddly sweet, or bitter, or of almonds” (online). Of course not all murders are committed in such a subtle fashion. In Roald Dahl’s Lamb to the Slaughter (1953), Mary Maloney murders her policeman husband, clubbing him over the head with a frozen leg of lamb. The meat is roasting nicely when her husband’s colleagues arrive to investigate his death, the lamb is offered and consumed: the murder weapon now beyond the recovery of investigators. Recent years have also seen more and more crime fiction writers present a central protagonist working within the food industry, drawing connections between the skills required for food preparation and those needed to catch a murderer. Working with cooks or crooks, or both, requires planning and people skills in addition to creative thinking, dedication, reliability, stamina, and a willingness to take risks. Kent Carroll insists that “food and mysteries just go together” (Carroll in Calta), with crime fiction website Stop, You’re Killing Me! listing, at the time of writing, over 85 culinary-based crime fiction series, there is certainly sufficient evidence to support his claim. Of the numerous works available that focus on food there are many series that go beyond featuring food and beverages, to present recipes as well as the solving of crimes. These include: the Candy Holliday Murder Mysteries by B. B. Haywood; the Coffeehouse Mysteries by Cleo Coyle; the Hannah Swensen Mysteries by Joanne Fluke; the Hemlock Falls Mysteries by Claudia Bishop; the Memphis BBQ Mysteries by Riley Adams; the Piece of Cake Mysteries by Jacklyn Brady; the Tea Shop Mysteries by Laura Childs; and, the White House Chef Mysteries by Julie Hyzy. The vast majority of offerings within this female dominated sub-genre that has been labelled “Crime and Dine” (Collins online) are American, both in origin and setting. A significant contribution to this increasingly popular formula is, however, from an Australian author Kerry Greenwood. Food features within her famed Phryne Fisher Series with recipes included in A Question of Death (2007). Recipes also form part of Greenwood’s food-themed collection of short crime stories Recipes for Crime (1995), written with Jenny Pausacker. These nine stories, each one imitating the style of one of crime fiction’s greatest contributors (from Agatha Christie to Raymond Chandler), allow readers to simultaneously access mysteries and recipes. 2004 saw the first publication of Earthly Delights and the introduction of her character, Corinna Chapman. This series follows the adventures of a woman who gave up a career as an accountant to open her own bakery in Melbourne. Corinna also investigates the occasional murder. Recipes can be found at the end of each of these books with the Corinna Chapman Recipe Book (nd), filled with instructions for baking bread, muffins and tea cakes in addition to recipes for main courses such as risotto, goulash, and “Chicken with Pineapple 1971 Style”, available from the publisher’s website. Recipes: Integration and Segregation In Heartburn (1983), Rachel acknowledges that presenting a work of fiction and a collection of recipes within a single volume can present challenges, observing: “I see that I haven’t managed to work in any recipes for a while. It’s hard to work in recipes when you’re moving the plot forward” (99). How Rachel tells her story is, however, a reflection of how she undertakes her work, with her own cookbooks being, she admits, more narration than instruction: “The cookbooks I write do well. They’re very personal and chatty–they’re cookbooks in an almost incidental way. I write chapters about friends or relatives or trips or experiences, and work in the recipes peripherally” (17). Some authors integrate detailed recipes into their narratives through description and dialogue. An excellent example of this approach can be found in the Coffeehouse Mystery Series by Cleo Coyle, in the novel On What Grounds (2003). When the central protagonist is being questioned by police, Clare Cosi’s answers are interrupted by a flashback scene and instructions on how to make Greek coffee: Three ounces of water and one very heaped teaspoon of dark roast coffee per serving. (I used half Italian roast, and half Maracaibo––a lovely Venezuelan coffee, named after the country’s major port; rich in flavour, with delicate wine overtones.) / Water and finely ground beans both go into the ibrik together. The water is then brought to a boil over medium heat (37). This provides insight into Clare’s character; that, when under pressure, she focuses her mind on what she firmly believes to be true – not the information that she is doubtful of or a situation that she is struggling to understand. Yet breaking up the action within a novel in this way–particularly within crime fiction, a genre that is predominantly dependant upon generating tension and building the pacing of the plotting to the climax–is an unusual but ultimately successful style of writing. Inquiry and instruction are comfortable bedfellows; as the central protagonists within these works discover whodunit, the readers discover who committed murder as well as a little bit more about one of the world’s most popular beverages, thus highlighting how cookbooks and novels both serve to entertain and to educate. Many authors will save their recipes, serving them up at the end of a story. This can be seen in Julie Hyzy’s White House Chef Mystery novels, the cover of each volume in the series boasts that it “includes Recipes for a Complete Presidential Menu!” These menus, with detailed ingredients lists, instructions for cooking and options for serving, are segregated from the stories and appear at the end of each work. Yet other writers will deploy a hybrid approach such as the one seen in Like Water for Chocolate (1989), where the ingredients are listed at the commencement of each chapter and the preparation for the recipes form part of the narrative. This method of integration is also deployed in The Kitchen Daughter (2011), which sees most of the chapters introduced with a recipe card, those chapters then going on to deal with action in the kitchen. Using recipes as chapter breaks is a structure that has, very recently, been adopted by Australian celebrity chef, food writer, and, now fiction author, Ed Halmagyi, in his new work, which is both cookbook and novel, The Food Clock: A Year of Cooking Seasonally (2012). As people exchange recipes in reality, so too do fictional characters. The Recipe Club (2009), by Andrea Israel and Nancy Garfinkel, is the story of two friends, Lilly Stone and Valerie Rudman, which is structured as an epistolary novel. As they exchange feelings, ideas and news in their correspondence, they also exchange recipes: over eighty of them throughout the novel in e-mails and letters. In The Food of Love (2004), written messages between two of the main characters are also used to share recipes. In addition, readers are able to post their own recipes, inspired by this book and other works by Anthony Capella, on the author’s website. From Page to Plate Some readers are contributing to the burgeoning food tourism market by seeking out the meals from the pages of their favourite novels in bars, cafés, and restaurants around the world, expanding the idea of “map as menu” (Spang 79). In Shannon McKenna Schmidt’s and Joni Rendon’s guide to literary tourism, Novel Destinations (2009), there is an entire section, “Eat Your Words: Literary Places to Sip and Sup”, dedicated to beverages and food. The listings include details for John’s Grill, in San Francisco, which still has on the menu Sam Spade’s Lamb Chops, served with baked potato and sliced tomatoes: a meal enjoyed by author Dashiell Hammett and subsequently consumed by his well-known protagonist in The Maltese Falcon (193), and the Café de la Paix, in Paris, frequented by Ian Fleming’s James Bond because “the food was good enough and it amused him to watch the people” (197). Those wanting to follow in the footsteps of writers can go to Harry’s Bar, in Venice, where the likes of Marcel Proust, Sinclair Lewis, Somerset Maugham, Ernest Hemingway, and Truman Capote have all enjoyed a drink (195) or The Eagle and Child, in Oxford, which hosted the regular meetings of the Inklings––a group which included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien––in the wood-panelled Rabbit Room (203). A number of eateries have developed their own literary themes such as the Peacocks Tearooms, in Cambridgeshire, which blends their own teas. Readers who are also tea drinkers can indulge in the Sherlock Holmes (Earl Grey with Lapsang Souchong) and the Doctor Watson (Keemun and Darjeeling with Lapsang Souchong). Alternatively, readers may prefer to side with the criminal mind and indulge in the Moriarty (Black Chai with Star Anise, Pepper, Cinnamon, and Fennel) (Peacocks). The Moat Bar and Café, in Melbourne, situated in the basement of the State Library of Victoria, caters “to the whimsy and fantasy of the fiction housed above” and even runs a book exchange program (The Moat). For those readers who are unable, or unwilling, to travel the globe in search of such savoury and sweet treats there is a wide variety of locally-based literary lunches and other meals, that bring together popular authors and wonderful food, routinely organised by book sellers, literature societies, and publishing houses. There are also many cookbooks now easily obtainable that make it possible to re-create fictional food at home. One of the many examples available is The Book Lover’s Cookbook (2003) by Shaunda Kennedy Wenger and Janet Kay Jensen, a work containing over three hundred pages of: Breakfasts; Main & Side Dishes; Soups; Salads; Appetizers, Breads & Other Finger Foods; Desserts; and Cookies & Other Sweets based on the pages of children’s books, literary classics, popular fiction, plays, poetry, and proverbs. If crime fiction is your preferred genre then you can turn to Jean Evans’s The Crime Lover’s Cookbook (2007), which features short stories in between the pages of recipes. There is also Estérelle Payany’s Recipe for Murder (2010) a beautifully illustrated volume that presents detailed instructions for Pigs in a Blanket based on the Big Bad Wolf’s appearance in The Three Little Pigs (44–7), and Roast Beef with Truffled Mashed Potatoes, which acknowledges Patrick Bateman’s fondness for fine dining in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho (124–7). Conclusion Cookbooks and many popular fiction novels are reflections of each other in terms of creativity, function, and structure. In some instances the two forms are so closely entwined that a single volume will concurrently share a narrative while providing information about, and instruction, on cookery. Indeed, cooking in books is becoming so popular that the line that traditionally separated cookbooks from other types of books, such as romance or crime novels, is becoming increasingly distorted. The separation between food and fiction is further blurred by food tourism and how people strive to experience some of the foods found within fictional works at bars, cafés, and restaurants around the world or, create such experiences in their own homes using fiction-themed recipe books. Food has always been acknowledged as essential for life; books have long been acknowledged as food for thought and food for the soul. Thus food in both the real world and in the imagined world serves to nourish and sustain us in these ways. References Adams, Riley. Delicious and Suspicious. New York: Berkley, 2010. –– Finger Lickin’ Dead. New York: Berkley, 2011. –– Hickory Smoked Homicide. New York: Berkley, 2011. Baltazar, Lori. “A Novel About Food, Recipes Included [Book review].” Dessert Comes First. 28 Feb. 2012. 20 Aug. 2012 ‹http://dessertcomesfirst.com/archives/8644›. Berkeley, Anthony. The Poisoned Chocolates Case. London: Collins, 1929. Bishop, Claudia. Toast Mortem. New York: Berkley, 2010. –– Dread on Arrival. New York: Berkley, 2012. Brady, Jacklyn. A Sheetcake Named Desire. New York: Berkley, 2011. –– Cake on a Hot Tin Roof. New York: Berkley, 2012. Calta, Marialisa. “The Art of the Novel as Cookbook.” The New York Times. 17 Feb. 1993. 23 Jul. 2012 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/17/style/the-art-of-the-novel-as-cookbook.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm›. Capella, Anthony. The Food of Love. London: Time Warner, 2004/2005. Carroll, Kent in Calta, Marialisa. “The Art of the Novel as Cookbook.” The New York Times. 17 Feb. 1993. 23 Jul. 2012 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/17/style/the-art-of-the-novel-as-cookbook.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm›. Childs, Laura. Death by Darjeeling. New York: Berkley, 2001. –– Shades of Earl Grey. New York: Berkley, 2003. –– Blood Orange Brewing. New York: Berkley, 2006/2007. –– The Teaberry Strangler. New York: Berkley, 2010/2011. Collins, Glenn. “Your Favourite Fictional Crime Moments Involving Food.” The New York Times Diner’s Journal: Notes on Eating, Drinking and Cooking. 16 Jul. 2012. 17 Jul. 2012 ‹http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/16/your-favorite-fictional-crime-moments-involving-food›. Coyle, Cleo. On What Grounds. New York: Berkley, 2003. –– Murder Most Frothy. New York: Berkley, 2006. –– Holiday Grind. New York: Berkley, 2009/2010. –– Roast Mortem. New York: Berkley, 2010/2011. Christie, Agatha. A Pocket Full of Rye. London: Collins, 1953. Dahl, Roald. Lamb to the Slaughter: A Roald Dahl Short Story. New York: Penguin, 1953/2012. eBook. Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist, or, the Parish Boy’s Progress. In Collection of Ancient and Modern British Authors, Vol. CCXXIX. Paris: Baudry’s European Library, 1838/1839. Duran, Nancy, and Karen MacDonald. “Information Sources for Food Studies Research.” Food, Culture and Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research 2.9 (2006): 233–43. Ephron, Nora. Heartburn. New York: Vintage, 1983/1996. Esquivel, Laura. Trans. Christensen, Carol, and Thomas Christensen. Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Instalments with Recipes, romances and home remedies. London: Black Swan, 1989/1993. Evans, Jeanne M. The Crime Lovers’s Cookbook. City: Happy Trails, 2007. Fluke, Joanne. Fudge Cupcake Murder. New York: Kensington, 2004. –– Key Lime Pie Murder. New York: Kensington, 2007. –– Cream Puff Murder. New York: Kensington, 2009. –– Apple Turnover Murder. New York: Kensington, 2010. Greenwood, Kerry, and Jenny Pausacker. Recipes for Crime. Carlton: McPhee Gribble, 1995. Greenwood, Kerry. The Corinna Chapman Recipe Book: Mouth-Watering Morsels to Make Your Man Melt, Recipes from Corinna Chapman, Baker and Reluctant Investigator. nd. 25 Aug. 2012 ‹http://www.allenandunwin.com/_uploads/documents/minisites/Corinna_recipebook.pdf›. –– A Question of Death: An Illustrated Phryne Fisher Treasury. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2007. Halmagyi, Ed. The Food Clock: A Year of Cooking Seasonally. Sydney: Harper Collins, 2012. Haywood, B. B. Town in a Blueberry Jam. New York: Berkley, 2010. –– Town in a Lobster Stew. New York: Berkley, 2011. –– Town in a Wild Moose Chase. New York: Berkley, 2012. Hyzy, Julie. State of the Onion. New York: Berkley, 2008. –– Hail to the Chef. New York: Berkley, 2008. –– Eggsecutive Orders. New York: Berkley, 2010. –– Buffalo West Wing. New York: Berkley, 2011. –– Affairs of Steak. New York: Berkley, 2012. Israel, Andrea, and Nancy Garfinkel, with Melissa Clark. The Recipe Club: A Novel About Food And Friendship. New York: HarperCollins, 2009. McHenry, Jael. The Kitchen Daughter: A Novel. New York: Gallery, 2011. Mitchell, Margaret. Gone With the Wind. London: Pan, 1936/1974 O’Reilly, Brian, with Virginia O’Reilly. Angelina’s Bachelors: A Novel, with Food. New York: Gallery, 2011. Payany, Estérelle. Recipe for Murder: Frightfully Good Food Inspired by Fiction. Paris: Flammarion, 2010. Peacocks Tearooms. Peacocks Tearooms: Our Unique Selection of Teas. 23 Aug. 2012 ‹http://www.peacockstearoom.co.uk/teas/page1.asp›. Piatti-Farnell, Lorna. “A Taste of Conflict: Food, History and Popular Culture In Katherine Mansfield’s Fiction.” Australasian Journal of Popular Culture 2.1 (2012): 79–91. Risson, Toni, and Donna Lee Brien. “Editors’ Letter: That Takes the Cake: A Slice Of Australasian Food Studies Scholarship.” Australasian Journal of Popular Culture 2.1 (2012): 3–7. Sayers, Dorothy L. Strong Poison. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1930/2003. Schmidt, Shannon McKenna, and Joni Rendon. Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen’s Bath to Ernest Hemingway’s Key West. Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2009. Shange, Ntozake. Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo: A Novel. New York: St Martin’s, 1982. Spang, Rebecca L. “All the World’s A Restaurant: On The Global Gastronomics Of Tourism and Travel.” In Raymond Grew (Ed). Food in Global History. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999. 79–91. Taylor, Timothy. “Food/Crime Fiction.” Timothy Taylor. 2010. 17 Jul. 2012 ‹http://www.timothytaylor.ca/10/08/20/foodcrime-fiction›. The Moat Bar and Café. The Moat Bar and Café: Welcome. nd. 23 Aug. 2012 ‹http://themoat.com.au/Welcome.html›. Wenger, Shaunda Kennedy, and Janet Kay Jensen. The Book Lover’s Cookbook: Recipes Inspired by Celebrated Works of Literature, and the Passages that Feature Them. New York: Ballantine, 2003/2005.

You look great.You look amazing.I didn’t recognise you.You are looking 10 years younger.Just how much weight have you lost? It really shows.Isn’t Gayle looking great?Have you done it just through diet and exercise, [or surgery]?Have you lost some more since I last saw you?You don’t want to look scrawny.You are not planning to lose any more are you?Have you seen Gayle doesn’t she look drawn?Of course you are still much heavier than the NHS recommendation. Thinking and Writing about Fat… Since the beginning of my academic career I have written auto/biographically. Like others I believe that in including my own experience in my writing I make clear not only the influence my autobiography has on the work that I do but how, in turn, the work that I do influences my autobiography (Stanley; Morgan; Letherby Feminist Research, Interconnected Lives). I began this paper with a list of statements that have been said to me, or about me (and reported to me) by others in the last 18 months since a significant weight loss. As you see the messages ARE mixed and even the ‘compliments’ feel tainted; did I really look so bad before? Jeannine Gailey (16) reminds us that the fat body, especially the female fat body, is marginalised, stigmatised and summarising her study with 74 fat women argues that the women whose voices are represented in this book indicated that they are often hyperinvisible when it comes to their health or actual dealings with health-care practitioners, in addition to frequently feeling invisible with sexual partners, family, friends, colleagues, and strangers. Some of my own (auto/biographical) research has focussed on the experience of ‘infertility’ and ‘involuntary childlessness’ and the above statement also applies to many of my respondents, and similar others, who feel marginalised and stigmatised because of their status as nonmother (e.g. Letherby nonmotherhood). Although not my primary research area I have recently been involved in a number of research projects – either as supervisor or researcher – concerned with weight and/or weight management. One of these focused on the relationship between ‘obesity’ and ‘infertility’ (written, like other phrases in this piece, in quotation marks to highlight the problematic nature of simplistic definitions). Some medical literature suggests that a woman’s body mass index (BMI) is an important determinant of medical outcomes in the treatment of ‘infertility’. However, recent work contests the link between BMI, ‘obesity’ and ‘infertility’. Research from the social sciences shows that medical professionals, media and lay discourse position some individuals as ‘deserving’ and others as ‘undeserving’ of medical treatment (including in/fertility treatment) (Letherby Infertility; Stenhouse and Letherby). Women unable to achieve pregnancy and/or carry a baby to term due to weight related issues (either ‘real’ or assumed) will likely experience multiple stigma in relation to their gender, BMI and fertility status. In addition restricting ‘infertility’ treatment on the grounds of weight can itself cause stigmatization and may lead to depression and low self-esteem. ****I began writing fiction (as an adult) about five years ago and this type of writing has become increasingly important to me both academically and personally and is, I think, another way to tell auto/biographical stories. In my teaching I encourage students to think sociologically about fiction they enjoy and in recent academic writing on reproduction and on bereavement and loss I have included some fictional pieces (e.g. Davidson and Letherby; Letherby Interconnected Lives, Mortality). Taking a traditional view of the relationship between fact and fiction, some might suggest that fiction is the opposite of explicit auto/biographical writing. I disagree. Drawing specifically on respondents’ narratives, or more generally on our research and our own life experiences ‘fiction’ can provide a powerful, accessible narrative (e.g. Frank). What follows is a piece of fiction that is auto/biographical in that it connects to some experiences in my own life (see Letherby Interconnected Lives) and has connections to some of the experience of respondents from various of my research studies. My aim (or rather one of them) in writing this piece was to highlight the stigma and marginalisation that women in these situations sometimes feel. The Mixed Messages, not least with reference to fat, are evident I hope. Mr Sprat and I: A Story He drank three times as much as I did during our first date. I replied ‘yes please,’ when twice he asked if I wanted crisps or nuts with my wine. He suggested a film, followed by more drinks the next time we met. I enjoyed the popcorn in the cinema, the snacks in the pub. He bought us a fish and chip supper on the way home. The cod was fresh and lightly battered, the chips, made from good potatoes, were just the right combination of fat and starch. We ate our meal straight from the paper. He wiped his hands on a tissue but surprised and delighted me by sucking the grease from my fingers one by one. I was lost. I was his. A generous boyfriend he often paid for us to eat out. He never had a pudding but would choose a liqueur, or a shot of whisky, instead. Curious, rather than shocked, I wondered how he could down a pint in just a few seconds. ‘How do you do that, how can you drink it so quickly?’ I asked. ‘I open my throat and it just slips down; only when I'm really thirsty though.' He smacked his lips and wiped his mouth with his hand. He drank the whisky more slowly, ‘to enjoy the hot, fiery kick.’ I always had a taste of his starter and ended my meal with something sweet. Chocolatey creations were my preference but I enjoyed all desserts. He indulged me and reassured me. ‘I love your curves,’ he'd say proving it with his hands and his lips. Many a morning after I’d cook us a big fry-up. ‘Soaks up the booze,’ he said. Amsterdam was his choice for a stag weekend. He travelled with a large group of friends. There weren't any sexual exploits, I'm sure of that, but plenty of drink was taken and some wacky backy smoked. A good time was had by all and it took him a few days to recover from the trip.I choose a country hotel weekend break for my pre-wedding treat. We all had a beauty treatment or two and swam, read and gossiped the two days away. The food was plentiful and beautifully presented. I had to eat leanly between the hen party and the main event to get into my dress.After making such a beautiful speech he deserved to relax a little. But I wish he'd stopped at the champagne. After our first dance he propped up the bar with his mates and my brother and drank more than all of them; mostly beer, a few spirits. I’d been so looking forward to our first night of pleasure as husband and wife but the consummation of our marriage lacked vitality; a waste of the four-poster bed. His breath stank. As soon as it was over he fell asleep, although I was still wide awake. As part of our wedding package there were some goodies waiting for us in the bridal suite including a good sized box of melt-in-the-mouth chocolates. I ate the lot. He made it up to me on the honeymoon. More attentive than ever he hired a boat and took me to secluded beaches. As we sunbathed he lazily stroked my back and my thighs, when we swam we explored each other's bodies undercover of water. ‘I love you, I want you,’ he whispered. ‘I love you so much I want to bite you, to gobble you up.’ My body responded to his touch and to his words. I had never felt so desired, so cherished. The evenings and the nights were the best. We ordered local specialties at dinner and with his bare hands he fed me succulent fish, juicy meats and fruit dripping in syrup. In bed as he licked the excesses off my lips and from my mouth I could taste the wine in his. I drank him in. We were never so in tune again, our senses alive, our individual indulgences merged. We were as one, our bodies replete.Back home he worked hard and played hard keeping up his nights out with the boys and finding new restaurants for us to go to. He became skilled at choosing the correct wine to accompany the dishes I favoured. He drank the pudding wine whilst I ate the pudding. At home he kept beer in the fridge along with a jug of water so he could add a splash to his whisky. For his birthday I treated him to a peaty single malt. Our weekly food bill was a 50/50 split between alcohol and food. I loved to cook. I roasted and baked and chipped and fried. I folded and mixed and whisked. I was adventurous with spices. For my birthday he bought me a cookery book; a best seller from the latest celebrity chef. I experimented some more. My pastry was light and my sauces smooth. He was always appreciative but more often than not he wouldn't finish his food, sometimes leaving as much as he ate. As he carried our glasses (usually his third or fourth alcoholic drink since returning from work, almost always my first) through to the lounge I would take the plates into the kitchen (spooning the remains from his plate into my mouth rather than scraping it into the bin). A hard worker he was promoted, several times. More money led to more expensive tastes and we enjoyed good holidays and ate out even more, sometimes with his colleagues and bosses. A little shy in such company, aware of his status as a working class boy done good, he was always happier after a couple of drinks and would have a quick one before we left the house. In response to my anxious, ‘darling, do you think you should?,’ he would kiss me and say, ‘just a small one to oil the conversation.’I lived for our holidays and the nights we spent alone. We always found something to talk and laugh about and our indulgence of each other's eating and drinking habits was mirrored by a concern for each other's sexual wellbeing. He liked sex with the lights on. I adored it when he quietly sang to me during lovemaking. I hated the corporate entertainment. The women seemed to get thinner each time we met, shrinking as I grew. The way they managed to look as if they were eating the wonderfully cooked and carefully presented food whilst not actually consuming anything was an art form. I couldn't resist the delicious offerings but their snide observation of me turned the food to cardboard in my mouth. His work put him under increasing pressure. Some mornings I could taste alcohol mingled with mint when he kissed me goodbye. I found a bottle of vodka at the back of the cupboard, a cheap brand, that hadn't been in the trolley at our weekly shop. ‘Where did this come from, did you buy it?,’ I asked. ‘I guess I must have, I don't remember,’ he shrugged. The bottle disappeared but he kissed me less and began going straight upstairs when he got home. I'd hear him moving around, opening cupboards, finding hiding places for his not so secret stash.I still shopped and cooked trying new recipes in an attempt to win him back from his liquid mistress. I made meals that in my view were fit for the Gods, rich in flavour and high in calories. But he was less and less interested. He’d push his plate away and re-fill his glass. Eventually I gave up and moved on to cheap two-for-the-price-of-one microwave meals finding their gloopiness strangely comforting. They weren't enough for me though and I’d fill up with extra creamy potatoes or with toast, dripping with butter and topped thickly with cheese or chocolate spread. I ate off and on all day when I was alone and when he was asleep.When I said that I wanted us to have a baby he agreed, clinging, like me, to the hope that a child might make things better. Half-heartedly we tried for a while. The lights were off and there was no singing. Nothing happened. We lied to the GP when asked about our sexual activity, embarrassed and distressed at the lack of passion in our life together. He lied about his drinking too. ‘How much do I drink? Well, a little more than I should I guess, I know I should cut down, but you know how it is?’ He glanced at me, smiled at the male doctor and shrugged. I hated him then. I hated him as he failed to admit that he had a problematic relationship with alcohol, as he duped the GP and won his sympathy rather than rightly causing concern. I could guess what the doctor was thinking. Who wouldn't need a drink when married to a woman like me, a woman who had let food get the better of her spirit and her body? I couldn't lie about my problem. It lay heavy on my bones. I left the surgery with a diet sheet and a red face. When he shook the doctor's hand I turned away in misery and disgust.We drove home with the radio on to cover our silence. Once he tried to take my hand but I pulled away. I went to the kitchen. He went upstairs. I cut some bread and turned on the toaster. He reached into the back of his shirt drawer and pulled out a bottle. One night soon after he took me in his arms, as much of me as he could, holding on tight even as I tried to push him away. ‘Let's do something, anything. I still love you,’ he said. ‘What about a holiday? Please darling. You still love me too don’t you?’ Nodding, I relaxed into him, my bulk against his sharp hips. I packed my optimism along with his tiny shorts and my super-size trousers and dresses but my tentative happiness didn't last long. I couldn't do up the seatbelt in standard class and our upgrade was because of my size rather than our celebrity. For once I wasn't hungry. We tried hard to recreate the more heady days of our relationship but the break was not what either of us wished for. He drank heavily on the return journey, swigging back spirits in the way he once had pints. I closed my eyes to block out the pitying stares.He drank more. He ate even less. He lost his job. I heard him retching in the toilet every morning. He threw his vices up, I kept mine deep inside. As he flushed the toilet I thought of the baby we'd been unable to make I whispered to myself ‘that should be me, the morning sickness should be mine.' Then I went to the kitchen to cook and eat the fried breakfast he couldn’t face anymore. He went out most days, to the pub or the off-license.I went out only to the supermarket. He started to smell. He slept fitfully and snored loudly when he did sleep. He never touched me, unable to make love to me even if either of us had wanted it. When he wasn't sleeping he was drinking. I outgrew my clothes again so I lived in t-shirts and joggers and ordered groceries online. I stuffed the food in as soon as it arrived but it didn't comfort me anymore. He collapsed.I let him go to the hospital alone. He came home. He didn't pour himself a drink. He packed a bag instead. ‘I think I should go, don't you?’ he said.‘Yes’, I said, the tears running down my face. He turned just as he was leaving. ‘Do you think there's a way back for us, we were so good together once?’ ‘I don't know,’ I said. After he left I filled the bin; with dairy and carbohydrates, with fat and sugar… Some Concluding Thoughts… I consider writing as a method of inquiry, a way of finding out about yourself and your topic. Although we usually think about writing as a mode of “telling” about the social world, writing is not just a mopping-up activity at the end of a research project. Writing is also a way of “knowing” – a method of discovery and analysis. By writing in different ways, we discover new aspects of our topic and our relationship to it. Form and content are inseparable (Richardson 515). I agree. Writing – both in the traditional academic style and utilising prose and fiction – enables us, has enabled me, to reflect in detail about issues and topics and that important to me and to others, issues and topics that are often misunderstood and misrepresented. Fat, alongside in/fertility, childlessness and nonmotherhood, is one such issue. References Frank, Katherine. “‘The Management of Hunger’: Using Fiction in Writing Anthropology.” Qualitative Inquiry 6.4 (2000): 474-488. Gailey, Jeannine A. The Hyper(in)visible Fat Woman: Weight and Gender Discourse in Contemporary Society. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Letherby, Gayle. Feminist Research in Theory and Practice. Buckingham: Open University, 2003. ———. “Battle of the Gametes: Cultural Representation of Medically Assisted Conception.” Gender, Identity and Reproduction: Social Perspectives, eds. Sarah Earle and Gayle Letherby. London: Palgrave, 2003. 50-65. ———. “‘Infertility’ and ‘Involuntary Childlessness’: Losses, Ambivalences and Resolutions.” Understanding Reproductive Loss: International Perspectives on Life, Death and Fertility, eds. Sarah Earle, Carol Komaromy, and Linda Layne. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012. 9-22. ———. He, Himself and I: Reflections on Inter/connected Lives. Oxford: Clio Press, 2014. ———. “Bathwater, Babies and Other Losses: A Personal and Academic Story.” Mortality: Promoting the Interdisciplinary Study of Death and Dying 20.2 (2015). ‹http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13576275.2014.989494#.VTfN4iFVikp›.Morgan, David. “Sociological Imaginations and Imagining Sociologies: Bodies, Auto/biographies and Other Mysteries.” Sociology 32.4 (1998): 647-63. Richardson, Laurel. “Writing: A Method of Inquiry.” A Handbook of Qualitative Research, eds. Norman Denzin and Yvonne Lincoln. 1st ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1994. 923-948. Stanley, Liz. “On Auto/biography in Sociology.” Sociology 27.1 (1993): 41-52. Stenhouse, Elizabeth, and Gayle Letherby. “Fat and Infertile: Challenging Double Stigma.” Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI) Annual Conference, Toronto, Oct. 2012.

Introduction Special occasion cookery has been a staple of the cookbook writing in the English speaking Western world for decades. This includes providing catering for personal milestones as well as religious and secular festivals. Yet, in an era when the culinary publishing sector is undergoing considerable expansion and market segmentation, narratives of foods marking of one of life’s central and inescapable rites—death—are extremely rare. This discussion investigates examples of food writing related to death and funeral rites in contemporary cookbooks. Funeral feasts held in honour of the dead date back beyond recorded history (Luby and Gruber), and religious, ceremonial and community group meals as a component of funeral rites are now ubiquitous around the world. In earlier times, the dead were believed to derive both pleasure and advantage from these offerings (LeClercq), and contemporary practice still reflects this to some extent, with foods favoured by the deceased sometimes included in such meals (see, for instance, Varidel). In the past, offering some sustenance as a component of a funeral was often necessary, as mourners might have travelled considerable distances to attend the ceremony, and eateries outside the home were not as commonplace or convenient to access as they are today. The abundance and/or lavishness of the foods provided may also have reflected the high esteem in which the dead was held, and offered as a mark of community respect (Smith and Bird). Following longstanding tradition, it is still common for Western funeral attendees to gather after the formal parts of the event—the funeral service and burial or cremation —in a more informal atmosphere to share memories of the deceased and refreshments (Simplicity Funerals 31). Thursby notes that these events, which are ostensibly about the dead, often develop into a celebration of the ties between living family members and friends, “times of reunions and renewed relationships” (94). Sharing food is central to this celebration as “foods affirm identity, strengthen kinship bonds, provide comfortable and familiar emotional support during periods of stress” (79), while familiar dishes evoke both memories and promising signals of the continued celebration of life” (94). While in the southern states and some other parts of the USA, it is customary to gather at the church premises after the funeral for a meal made up of items contributed by members of the congregation, and with leftovers sent home with the bereaved family (Siegfried), it is more common in Australasia and the UK to gather either in the home of the principal mourners, someone else’s home or a local hotel, club or restaurant (Jalland). Church halls are a less common option in Australasia, and an increasing trend is the utilisation of facilities attached to the funeral home and supplied as a component of a funeral package (Australian Heritage Funerals). The provision of this catering largely depends on the venue chosen, with the cookery either done by family and/or friends, the hotel, club, restaurant or professional catering companies, although this does not usually affect the style of the food, which in Australia and New Zealand is often based on a morning or afternoon tea style meal (Jalland). Despite widespread culinary innovation in other contexts, funeral catering bears little evidence of experimentation. Ash likens this to as being “fed by grandmothers”, and describes “scones, pastries, sandwiches, biscuits, lamingtons—food from a fifties afternoon party with the taste of Country Women’s Association about it”, noting that funerals “require humble food. A sandwich is not an affront to the dead” (online). Numerous other memoirists note this reliance on familiar foods. In “S is for Sad” in her An Alphabet for Gourmets (1949), food writer M.F.K. Fisher writes of mourners’s deep need for sustenance at this time as a “mysterious appetite that often surges in us when our hearts seem breaking and our lives too bleakly empty” (135). In line with Probyn’s argument that food foregrounds the viscerality of life (7), Fisher notes that “most bereaved souls crave nourishment more tangible than prayers: they want a steak. […] It is as if our bodies, wiser than we who wear them, call out for encouragement and strength and […] compel us […] to eat” (135, 136). Yet, while funerals are a recurring theme in food memoirs (see, for example, West, Consuming), only a small number of Western cookbooks address this form of special occasion food provision. Feast by Nigella Lawson Nigella Lawson’s Feast: Food that Celebrates Life (2004) is one of the very few popular contemporary cookbooks in English that includes an entire named section on cookery for funerals. Following twenty-one chapters that range from the expected (Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, and wedding) to more original (children’s and midnight) feasts, Lawson frames her discussion with an anthropological understanding of the meaning of special occasion eating. She notes that we use food “to mark occasions that are important to us in life” (vii) and how eating together “is the vital way we celebrate anything that matters […] how we mark the connections between us, how we celebrate life” (vii). Such meals embody both personal and group identities because both how and what is eaten “lies at the heart of who we are-as individuals, families, communities” (vii). This is consistent with her overall aims as a food writer—to explore foods’ meanings—as she states in the book’s introduction “the recipes matter […] but it is what the food says that really counts” (vii). She reiterates this near the end of the book, adding, almost as an afterthought, “and, of course, what it tastes like” (318). Lawson’s food writing also reveals considerable detail about herself. In common with many other celebrity chefs and food writers, Lawson continuously draws on, elaborates upon, and ultimately constructs her own life as a major theme of her works (Brien, Rutherford, and Williamson). In doing so, she, like these other chefs and food writers, draws upon revelations of her private life to lend authenticity to her cooking, to the point where her cookbooks could be described as “memoir-illustrated-with-recipes” (Brien and Williamson). The privileging of autobiographical information in Lawson’s work extends beyond the use of her own home and children in her television programs and books, to the revelation of personal details about her life, with the result that these have become well known. Her readers thus know that her mother, sister and first and much-loved husband all died of cancer in a relatively brief space of time, and how these tragedies affected her life. Her first book, How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food (1998), opened with the following dedication: “In memory of my mother, Vanessa (1936–1985) and my sister Thomasina (1961–1993)” (dedication page). Her husband, BBC broadcaster and The Times (London) journalist John Diamond, who died of throat cancer in 2001, furthered this public knowledge, writing about both his illness and at length about Lawson in his column and his book C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too (1999). In Feast, Lawson discusses her personal tragedies in the introduction of the ‘Funeral Foods’ chapter, writing about a friend's kind act of leaving bags of shopping from the supermarket for her when she was grieving (451). Her first recipe in this section, for a potato topped fish pie, is highly personalised in that it is described as “what I made on the evening following my mother’s funeral” (451). Following this, she again uses her own personal experience when she notes that “I don’t think anyone wants to cook in the immediate shock of bereavement […] but a few days on cooking can be a calming act, and since the mind knows no rest and has no focus, the body may as well be busy” (451). Similarly, her recipe for the slowly hard-boiled, dark-stained Hamine Eggs are described as “sans bouche”, which she explains means “without mouths to express sorrow and anguish.” She adds, drawing on her own memories of feelings at such times, “I find that appropriate: there is nothing to be said, or nothing that helps” (455). Despite these examples of raw emotion, Lawson’s chapter is not all about grief. She also comments on both the aesthetics of dishes suitable for such times and their meanings, as well as the assistance that can be offered to others through the preparation and sharing of food. In her recipe for a lamb tagine that includes prunes, she notes, for example, that the dried plums are “traditionally part of the funeral fare of many cultures […] since their black colour is thought to be appropriate to the solemnity of the occasion” (452). Lawson then suggests this as a suitable dish to offer to someone in mourning, someone who needs to “be taken care of by you” (452). This is followed by a lentil soup, the lentils again “because of their dark colour … considered fitting food for funerals” (453), but also practical, as the dish is “both comforting and sustaining and, importantly, easy to transport and reheat” (453). Her next recipe for a meatloaf containing a line of hard-boiled eggs continues this rhetorical framing—as it is “always comfort food […] perfect for having sliced on a plate at a funeral tea or for sending round to someone’s house” (453). She adds the observation that there is “something hopeful and cheering about the golden yolk showing through in each slice” (453), noting that the egg “is a recurring feature in funeral food, symbolising as it does, the cycle of life, the end and the beginning in one” (453). The next recipe, Heavenly Potatoes, is Lawson’s version of the dish known as Mormon or Utah Funeral potatoes (Jensen), which are so iconic in Utah that they were featured on one of the Salt Lake City Olympic Games souvenir pins (Spackman). This tray of potatoes baked in milk and sour cream and then topped with crushed cornflakes are, she notes, although they sound exotic, quite familiar, and “perfect alongside the British traditional baked ham” (454), and reference given to an earlier ham recipe. These savoury recipes are followed by those for three substantial cakes: an orange cake marbled with chocolate-coffee swirls, a fruit tea loaf, and a rosemary flavoured butter cake, each to be served sliced to mourners. She suggests making the marble cake (which Lawson advises she includes in memory of the deceased mother of one of her friends) in a ring mould, “as the circle is always significant. There is a cycle that continues but—after all, the cake is sliced and the circle broken—another that has ended” (456). Of the fruitcake, she writes “I think you need a fruit cake for a funeral: there’s something both comforting and bolstering (and traditional) about it” (457). This tripartite concern—with comfort, sustenance and tradition—is common to much writing about funeral foods. Cookbooks from the American South Despite this English example, a large proportion of cookbook writing about funeral foods is in American publications, and especially those by southern American authors, reflecting the bountiful spreads regularly offered to mourners in these states. This is chronicled in novels, short stories, folk songs and food memoirs as well as some cookery books (Purvis). West’s memoir Consuming Passions: A Food Obsessed Life (2000) has a chapter devoted to funeral food, complete with recipes (132–44). West notes that it is traditional in southern small towns to bring covered dishes of food to the bereaved, and that these foods have a powerful, and singular, expressive mode: “Sometimes we say all the wrong things, but food […] says, ‘I know you are inconsolable. I know you are fragile right now. And I am so sorry for your loss’” (139). Suggesting that these foods are “concern and sympathy in a Pyrex bowl” (139), West includes recipes for Chess pie (a lemon tart), with the information that this is known in the South as “funeral pie” (135) and a lemon-flavoured slice that, with a cup of tea, will “revive the spirit” (136). Like Lawson, West finds significance in the colours of funeral foods, continuing that the sunny lemon in this slice “reminds us that life continues, that we must sustain and nourish it” (139). Gaydon Metcalf and Charlotte Hays’s Being Dead is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral (2005), is one of the few volumes available dedicated to funeral planning and also offers a significant cookery-focused section on food to offer at, and take to, funeral events. Jessica Bemis Ward’s To Die For: A Book of Funeral Food, Tips, and Tales from the Old City Cemetery, Lynchburg, Virginia (2004) not only contains more than 100 recipes, but also information about funeral customs, practical advice in writing obituaries and condolence notes, and a series of very atmospheric photographs of this historic cemetery. The recipes in the book are explicitly noted to be traditional comfort foods from Central Virginia, as Ward agrees with the other writers identified that “simplicity is the by-word when talking about funeral food” (20). Unlike the other examples cited here, however, Ward also promotes purchasing commercially-prepared local specialties to supplement home-cooked items. There is certainly significantly more general recognition of the specialist nature of catering for funerals in the USA than in Australasia. American food is notable in stressing how different ethnic groups and regions have specific dishes that are associated with post-funeral meals. From this, readers learn that the Amish commonly prepare a funeral pie with raisins, and Chinese-American funerals include symbolic foods taken to the graveside as an offering—including piles of oranges for good luck and entire roast pigs. Jewish, Italian and Greek culinary customs in America also receive attention in both scholarly studies and popular American food writing (see, for example, Rogak, Purvis). This is beginning to be acknowledged in Australia with some recent investigation into the cultural importance of food in contemporary Chinese, Jewish, Greek, and Anglo-Australian funerals (Keys), but is yet to be translated into local mainstream cookery publication. Possible Publishing Futures As home funerals are a growing trend in the USA (Wilson 2009), green funerals increase in popularity in the UK (West, Natural Burial), and the multi-million dollar funeral industry is beginning to be questioned in Australia (FCDC), a more family or community-centered “response to death and after-death care” (NHFA) is beginning to re-emerge. This is a process whereby family and community members play a key role in various parts of the funeral, including in planning and carrying out after-death rituals or ceremonies, preparing the body, transporting it to the place of burial or cremation, and facilitating its final disposition in such activities as digging the grave (Gonzalez and Hereira, NHFA). Westrate, director of the documentary A Family Undertaking (2004), believes this challenges us to “re-examine our attitudes toward death […] it’s one of life’s most defining moments, yet it’s the one we typically prepare for least […] [and an indication of our] culture of denial” (PBS). With an emphasis on holding meaningful re-personalised after-disposal events as well as minimal, non-invasive and environmentally friendly treatment of the body (Harris), such developments would also seem to indicate that the catering involved in funeral occasions, and the cookbooks that focus on the provision of such food, may well become more prominent in the future. References [AHF] Australian Heritage Funerals. “After the Funeral.” Australian Heritage Funerals, 2013. 10 Mar. 2013 ‹http://www.ahfunerals.com.au/services.php?arid=31›. Ash, Romy. “The Taste of Sad: Funeral Feasts, Loss and Mourning.” Voracious: Best New Australian Food Writing. Ed. Paul McNally. Richmond, Vic.: Hardie Grant, 2011. 3 Apr. 2013 ‹http://www.romyash.com/non-fiction/the-taste-of-sad-funeral-feasts-loss-and-mourning›. Brien, Donna Lee, Leonie Rutherford, and Rosemary Williamson. "Hearth and Hotmail: The Domestic Sphere as Commodity and Community in Cyberspace." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). 28 Apr. 2013 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/10-brien.php›. Brien, Donna Lee, and Rosemary Williamson. “‘Angels of the Home’ in Cyberspace: New Technologies and Biographies of Domestic Production”. Biography and New Technologies. Australian National University. Humanities Research Centre, Canberra, ACT. 12-14 Sep. 2006. Conference Presentation. Diamond, John. C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too… . London: Vermilion, 1998. Fisher, M.F.K. “S is for Sad.” An Alphabet for Gourmets. New York, North Point P, 1989. 1st. pub. New York, Viking: 1949. Gonzalez, Faustino, and Mildreys Hereira. “Home-Based Viewing (El Velorio) After Death: A Cost-Effective Alternative for Some Families.” American Journal of Hospice & Pallative Medicine 25.5 (2008): 419–20. Harris, Mark. Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial. New York: Scribner, 2007. Jalland, Patricia. Australian Ways of Death: A Social and Cultural History 1840-1918. Melbourne: Oxford UP, 2002. Jensen, Julie Badger. The Essential Mormon Cookbook: Green Jell-O, Funeral Potatoes, and Other Secret Combinations. Salt Lake City: Deseret, 2004. Keys, Laura. “Undertaking a Jelly Feast in Williamstown.” Hobsons Bay Leader 28 Mar. 2011. 2 Apr. 2013 ‹http://hobsons-bay-leader.whereilive.com.au/news/story/undertaking-a-jelly-feast-in-williamstown›. Lawson, Nigella. How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food. London: Chatto & Windus, 1998. ---. Feast: Food that Celebrates Life. London: Chatto & Windus, 2004. LeClercq, H. “The Agape Feast.” The Catholic Encyclopedia I, New York: Robert Appleton, 1907. 3 Apr. 2013. ‹http://www.piney.com/AgapeCE.html›. Luby, Edward M., and Mark F. Gruber. “The Dead Must Be Fed: Symbolic Meanings of the Shellmounds of the San Francisco Bay Area.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 9.1 (1999): 95–108. Metcalf, Gaydon, and Charlotte Hays. Being Dead Is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral. New York: Miramax, 2005. [NHFA] National Home Funeral Alliance. “What is a Home Funeral?” National Home Funeral Alliance, 2012. 3 Apr. 2013. ‹http://homefuneralalliance.org›. PBS. “A Family Undertaking.” POV: Documentaries with a Point of View. PBS, 2004. 3 Apr. 2013 ‹http://www.pbs.org/pov/afamilyundertaking/film_description.php#.UYHI2PFquRY›. Probyn, Elspeth. Carnal Appetites: Food/Sex/Identities. London: Routledge, 2000. Purvis, Kathleen. “Funeral Food.” The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink. Ed. Andrew F. Smith. New York: Oxford UP, 2007. 247–48. Rogak, Lisa. Death Warmed Over: Funeral Food, Rituals, and Customs from Around the World. Berkeley: Ten Speed P, 2004. Siegfried, Susie. Church Potluck Carry-Ins and Casseroles: Homestyle Recipes for Church Suppers, Gatherings, and Community Celebrations. Avon, MA.: Adams Media, 2006. Simplicity Funerals. Things You Need To Know About Funerals. Sydney: Simplicity Funerals, 1990. Smith, Eric Alden, and Rebecca L. Bliege Bird. “Turtle Hunting and Tombstone Opening: Public Generosity as Costly Signaling.” Evolution and Human Behavior 21.4 (2000): 245–61.Spackman, Christy. “Mormonism’s Jell-O Mold: Why Do We Associate the Religion With the Gelatin Dessert?” Slate Magazine 17 Aug. (2012). 3 Apr. 2013.Thursby, Jacqueline S. Funeral Festivals in America: Rituals for the Living. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2006. Varidel, Rebecca. “Bompas and Parr: Funerals and Food at Nelson Bros.” Inside Cuisine 12 Mar. (2011). 3 Apr. 2013 ‹http://insidecuisine.com/2011/03/12/bompas-and-parr-funerals-and-food-at-nelson-bros›. Ward, Jessica Bemis. Food To Die for: A Book of Funeral Food, Tips, and Tales from the Old City Cemetery, Lynchburg, Virginia. Lynchburg: Southern Memorial Association, 2004. West, Ken. A Guide to Natural Burial. Andover UK: Sweet & Maxwell, 2010. West, Michael Lee. Consuming Passions: A Food Obsessed Life. New York: Perennial, 2000. Wilson, M.T. “The Home Funeral as the Final Act of Caring: A Qualitative Study.” Master in Nursing thesis. Livonia, Michigan: Madonna University, 2009.

Biopunk is an intriguing development of that essential cultural reference point for the information age: cyberpunk. William Gibson's Neuromancer (1984) did more than popularise the phrase cyberspace, it laid the basis for a genre that went on to capture the turbulent zeitgeist of a new digital age in which the promises of the much-vaunted, information society finally seemed possible. Karl Marx used the phrase "All that is solid melts into air..."1 to describe the profound social changes wrought by capitalism. It is also a fitting description of the apparent technology-induced paradigm shift in our contemporary perception of the world. Increasingly, solid, material structures are viewed in immaterial, informational terms and the boundaries between previously distinct categories are blurring. This paradigm shift has produced attendant tensions and the significance of biopunk resides in its cultural representation or 'playing out' our contemporary ontological confusion: physicality's newly problematic status. This article briefly samples the work of the British writers Jeff Noon and Michael Marshall Smith to argue that in the rapidly-approaching era of a fully-mapped human genome, biopunk provides a much-needed cathartic imaginative outlet for our growing confusion about the status of the physical in our brave new digital world. Viral Times -- Hybrid Confusion In the past we have always assumed that the external world around us has represented reality, however confusing or uncertain, and that the inner world of our minds, its dreams, hopes, ambitions, represented the realm of fantasy and the imagination. These roles it seems to me have been reversed ... the one small node of reality left to us is inside our own heads. (Ballard 5) The notion that biopunk's imaginative excesses can provide potentially useful insights into the contemporary condition is backed by the sense that the traditional boundary between the real and imagined worlds has become irretrievably blurred. Thus J.G. Ballard suggests that the ubiquity and pervasiveness of modern technology has reversed our usual ontological categories, a sentiment endorsed by Columbus, a character from Noon's novel Pollen, who asserts that "what is presently inside the head will shortly be outside the head. The dream! The dream will live!" (193). The increasing perception of such an ontological reversal is reflected in claims that cyberpunk can be viewed as social theory (Burrows) whereas "Baudrillard's futuristic postmodern social theory can be read in turn as science fiction" (Kellner 299). Cyberpunk fiction utilises the pace of technological change as a permanent narrative back-drop, and having identified various social trends within late capitalism re-presents them with an 'exaggerated clarity' that has become its hallmark. Biopunk takes such exaggerations even further. It metaphorises cyberpunk's social instabilities into an alarming maelstrom of biological uncertainty: exaggerated clarity becomes exaggerated anxiety. Biopunk develops the informationally saturated mise-en-scène of cyberpunk by exploring further the implications of the increasing convergence between information as an abstract entity and its embodied manipulation in biological DNA. It pursues Marx's previously cited image of melting ephemerality with fictional fervour: "These days the doors between the two worlds were slippery, as though the walls were going fluid" (Noon, Pollen 92)2. Biopunk's fictional emphasis upon disorienting levels of fluidity reflects non-fictional concerns about the potential information overloading tendencies of digital technologies: "the tie between information and action has been severed ... we are glutted with information, drowning in information, we have no control over it, don't know what to do with it" (Postman 6). In Pollen, Noon provides a grotesque metaphorical representation of Postman's fears in his portrayal of a near-future Manchester struggling to cope with the after-effects of the widespread dispersal of a powerful fertility drug called Fecundity 10. The city is over-run by exponentially proliferating flora and fauna that combine in a frenetic confusion of unlikely hybrid genetic couplings. Noon uses a blurring of previously distinct genetic categories to symbolise society's inability to control the growth of information. His fiction 'fleshes out' digitally-induced anxieties with a sustained depiction of futuristic Hieronymous Bosch-like febrility and fecundity, or, to use a phrase of Baudrillard's, 'organic delirium': The Zombies were dancing and blooming around the shit and the dust, flowers sprouting from their tough skins, petals falling from their mouths. It was a fine show of fauna and flora, all mixed into one being. New species ... It was a time of happenings and flower power. A time of changes. That's why this hayfever wave is exciting me so much, despite the danger. It's got me in two minds, this fever. The flowers are making a come back, and the world is getting messier. The barricades are coming down. This city is so fucking juicy right now. (Noon, Pollen 117 & 166) Noon's Nymphomation is set in a near-future Manchester that is the testing site for a national lottery based upon a domino-like game. The neologism that provides the novel's title, continues his key theme of fecundity, it is used: ... to denote a complex mathematical procedure where numbers rather than being added together or multiplied or whatever, were actually allowed to breed with each other, to produce new numbers, which had something to do with 'breeding ever more pathways towards the goal'. (Noon, Nymphomation 119) Fecundity in this setting does not only apply to the mating of informational and biological entities but is also apparent in the meme-like transmission of a pervasive copulatory capitalist zeitgeist: "the naked populace, making foreplay to the domiviz, bone-eyed and numberfucked ... Even the air had a hard-on, bulging with mathematics. Turning the burbflies into a nympho-swarm, liquid streets alive with perverts ..." (Noon, Nymphomation 65) General fecundity is specifically manifested in a glut of commercial activity which the authorities no longer seem able to control: "the streets of Blurbchester were thick with the mergers, a corporate fog of brand images. People had to battle through them ... The Government was at a loss regarding the overwhelming messages; they knew the experiment had gone wrong ... but how to right it?" (240). Informational overload becomes a reproductive frenzy whereby corporate messages breed literally like flies. Gibson's dance of biz becomes an actual buzz: As the burbflies went out of control, blocking out the streetlights, making a cloud of logos. It was rutting season for the living verts, and all over the city the male blurbs were riding on the backs of females. Biting their necks, hoping for babyverts. The city, the pulsating city, alive with the rain and colours and the stench of nymphomation Mathemedia. Here we go, numberfucked ... (Noon, Nymphomation 159) In the real world, the process of technological change causes flux and confusion. Cyberpunk fiction represents this by describing dystopian social environments. Its protagonists revel in the loss of traditional and coherent social values such as law and order and community where its protagonists revel in an unlimited smorgasboard of privatised formerly public services. Biopunk's distinctive quality stems from its own peculiar perspective on such confusion, manifested in a distinctive attention to bodily substance and a whole bestiary of new hybrid life-forms. Fleshy Contempt For Case, who'd lived for the bodiless exultation of cyberspace it was the Fall. In the bars he'd frequented as a cowboy hotshot, the elite stance involved a certain relaxed contempt for the flesh. The body was meat. Case fell into the prison of his own flesh. (Gibson, Neuromancer 12) This early passage from Neuromancer describes its protagonist's addictive relationship to the Matrix and provides a neat summary of cyberpunk's perspective on the growing subordination of the physical. Digital pleasure is experienced at the expense of alienation with the material environment. In Douglas Coupland's 'factional' work Microserfs (1995) the excessively manicured lawns at Microsoft headquarters merely represent an epiphenomenon of a more deeply-rooted societal trend towards the diminished importance of our physical sensibilities. Lego, or 'Satan's playtoy', is humorously identified as an emblematic commodity of this tendency due to the way in which it is responsible for brainwashing entire generations of youth from the information-dense industrialized nations into developing mind-sets that view the world as unitized, sterile, inorganic, and interchangeably modular ... Lego is, like, the perfect device to enculturate a citizenry intolerant of smell, intestinal by-products, nonadherence to unified standards, decay, blurred edges, germination and death. Try imagining a forest made of Lego. Good luck. Do you ever see Legos made from ice? dung? wood? iron? and sphagnum moss? No -- grotacious, or what? (Coupland 258) A typically distinguishing feature of biopunk is its willingness to stretch such aspects of the digital zeitgeist to their limits. In contrast to Coupland's easy humour and cyberpunk's "relaxed contempt for the flesh", biopunk refashions sentiments of unease with physical immediacy to take the form of nauseating disgust with the biological per se. In Spares, this is vividly embodied when, for example, objects fall into reality from the cyberspatial Gap: It was a bird, of a kind. A bird or a cat, either way. It was featherless, but stood a foot tall on spindly jointed legs; its face was avian but -- like the body -- fat and dotted with patchy, moulting orange fur. Two vestigial wings poked out of its side at right angles, looking as if they had been unceremoniously amputated with scissors and then re-cauterized. Most of the creature's skin was visible, an unhealthy white mess that appeared to be weeping fluid. The whole body heaved in and out as it sat, as if labouring for breath, and it gave of a smell of recent decay -- as if fresh-minted for death ... its beak opened. The hole this revealed looked less like a mouth than a churned wound, and the eyes, though vicious, were faltering ... The bird tried to take a step towards us, but the effort caused one of its legs to break. The top joint teetered in its socket and then popped out. The creature flopped onto its side. The skin over the joint tore like an over-ripe fruit, releasing a gout of matter that resembled nothing so much as a heavy period mixed with sour cream. (Smith 162) Biopunk's almost neo-gnostic distaste for flesh has arguably become increasingly apparent in William Gibson's later work. In Neuromancer, for example, the tone of 'relaxed contempt' is still evident in his description of the population's consumer demand: "Summer in the Sprawl, the mall crowds swaying like windblown grass, a field of flesh shot through with sudden eddies of need and gratification" (60). However, his vision is certainly less relaxed when, by the time of Idoru (1996), he describes how the media's audience ... is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the annointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth ... no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections. (28-9) Conclusion Just before an airplane breaks the sound barrier, sound waves become visible on the wings of the plane. The sudden visibility of sound just as sound ends is an apt instance of that great pattern of being that reveals new and opposite forms just as the earlier forms reach their peak performance. (McLuhan 12) McLuhan's image of the dramatic visibility of sound right at the moment of its imminent supercedance is a useful way of conceptualising the significance of biopunk and its obsessive highlighting of bodies and their metaphoric power. Perhaps as we leap-frog the mechanical technologies of modernity into a postindustrial world where information attains the status of the fourth element, biopunk is performing an idiosyncratic eulogy at the funeral of physicality. Footnotes Marshall Berman uses this phrase for the title of his historical, socio-cultural exploration of capitalism and its effects. Further examples include: ... the world is getting very fluid these days. Very fluid. Dangerously so (Noon, Pollen 101) ... It was a fluid world and there was danger for everybody living there. (157) ... the real world is up for grabs, especially since the world has become so fluid. (200) ... Even time was becoming fluid under the new map (246) ... Coyote is howling now, turning the road into liquid so he can glide down its throat. (254) The world was dissolving and the new day bled away ... safety, the rules, cartography, instruction ... all the bad things were peeling away (278) References Ballard, J.G. Crash. London: Vintage, 1995. Berman, M. All That Is Solid Melts into Air. London: Verso, 1983. Burrows, R. "Cyberpunk as Social Theory." Imagining Cities. Eds. S. Westwood and J. Williams. London: Routledge, 1997. Coupland, D. Microserfs. London: Flamingo, 1995. Gibson, W. Neuromancer. London: Grafton, 1984. ---. Idoru. London:Viking, 1996. Kellner, D. Media Culture. London: Routledge, 1995. McLuhan, M. Understanding Media. New York: New American Library, 1964. Noon, Jeff. Vurt. Manchester: Ringpull, 1993. ---. Pollen. Manchester: Ringpull, 1995. ---. Nymphomation, London: Corgi, 1997. Postman, N. "Informing Ourselves to Death." German Informatics Society, Stuttgart. 1990. 26 June 2000 <http://www.eff.org/pub/Net_culture/Criticisms/informing_ourselves_to_death.paper>. Smith, M. M. Spares. London: HarperCollins, 1996. Stephenson, N. Snow Crash. New York: Bantam Spectra, 1992. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Paul Taylor. "Fleshing Out the Maelstrom: Biopunk and the Violence of Information." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.3 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/speed.php>. Chicago style: Paul Taylor, "Fleshing Out the Maelstrom: Biopunk and the Violence of Information," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 3 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/speed.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Paul Taylor. (2000) Fleshing Out the Maelstrom: Biopunk and the Violence of Information. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(3). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/speed.php> ([your date of access]).

Ridley Scott was not the first director slated for The Martian, but when the star Matt Damon requested him Scott once again took on the science fiction genre. The story is a take on the classic Robinson Crusoe tale―this time an astronaut is accidently left alone on Mars. When he learns it will be a long time before he is rescued, he farms potatoes to stay alive. The story goes back and forth from the astronaut’s self-survival actions to NASA on earth dealing with space politics and the crew’s fight to get its comrade home. The Martian presents the most realistic view to date of Mars as well as the technology and inner workings of NASA headquarters. The film was an enormous success at the box office and with critics.